'Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO, What a Ride'

Played a round over the weekend and noticed they put out tee signs with distances. They also took out hole 12 like they had talked about and made a new hole 18. I like the layout, but after not playing there for a few weeks, I forgot how much I hate the short tee pads they have.

Sleepy Hollow Sports Park asked the City of Pleasant Hill to kill their plan to add a free public 9 hole in May of this year. (The council approved the plan though for the 2013 budget.) For this bitch move, I shall never pay Sleepy Hollow a dime and others should have an opportunity to evaluate if they should either.

GDL17921 wrote:So you would've rather had a nine hole shitter instead of what we got at SH? Nice opinion.

I think you read incorrectly. Sleepy Hollow asked the City of Pleasant Hill to kill the plan for disc golf at Doanes Park completely. By Sleepy Hollow's logic it is "we do not want a free option two miles away, please do not build anything" And, this was stated to council after the DG plan had been approved. This is not a question of rather.

GDL17921 wrote:So you would've rather had a nine hole shitter instead of what we got at SH? Nice opinion.

I think you read incorrectly. Sleepy Hollow asked the City of Pleasant Hill to kill the plan for disc golf at Doanes Park completely. By Sleepy Hollow's logic it is "we do not want a free option two miles away, please do not build anything" And, this was stated to council after the DG plan had been approved. This is not a question of rather.

Last I heard Doanes park was still going to be getting a course. Did Pleasant Hill decide not to do this now?

There's some truth to this and I actually forgot how much this may have affected what is (or is not) happening at Doanes. I'm scheduled to meet with Pleasant Hill again later this month and hopefully I have more answers.

I'm not sure how I feel about that - besides to say that it's completely normal for a business to try to use politics in the city they're in, to keep their "business" thriving...

While more courses are always a good thing, I can side with Sleepy Hollow on this one. Do I pay to play? Not really, except maybe a few bucks a year at most. Sliding that in after the fact sounds a little fishy, but I can't blame Sleepy Hollow for trying.

I think you certainly can blame them, and should too. It's horrible for any organization; whether it be a business, church, or Football League; to try and stifle growth or innovation ever. All the time.

I get that people see both sides here, and don't think this is a very egregious example of "monopolization" or whatever you want to call it. But honestly I think it's pretty ridiculous from all sides. I think it's dumb from a business perspective. Supposedly they put a lot into having a good course worth paying for. I got rained out the one time I was going to play it, so I don't know what it's like, but I've heard good reviews. If they want to charge people to play they should be prepared to remain competitive.

And is it really detrimental to their business in reality? I would argue that having a two nine-holers in such close proximity is a more enticing draw for a larger radius of golfers. I know I'm not normally making much of a drive for 9 holes in Iowa. You'd think it would bolster their lunch crowd... Who knows though..

The point is it's a shitty way to run a business from a social perspective. Rather than welcome competition or consider other potential outcomes, they would rather go the route of stifling it before it becomes "potentially" harmful to their bottom line. That deserves nothing but a big FU.

The culture in Iowa seems to be going the way of having a disc course in every park. That's not a bad thing. It should happen that way. Pay to play is becoming more popular so when it eventually does catch foothold in Iowa those courses will have to be incredible.

Just from a public relations standpoint, it's pretty dumb. But also, they are failing to see an opportunity. They entered a market that was already flush with high-quality 18-hole courses that are free to play and they are concerned with the little 9-holer going in their backyard?

This is an opportunity for them to draw new players getting their first experience at Doane, bringing them to their more exclusive venue as noobs become more interested in the game.

Here's the story, he actually wanted Pleasant Hill to give him the money they were going to put into Doanes. We all met at Sleepy Hollow to talk about it. The main thing I wanted was to make sure he put up a decent course, and so I offered to help with the design and basically offer any resource the Des Moines Disc Golf Club had to offer and to talk about doing events there. I'm disappointed that he didn't use us at all and went with a very rookie design. It's not the worst course because the land is pretty good, but it literally makes every single mistake people make when they don't know how to design a course.

It's his business and he's been there a long time and the only one who is going to pay for his mistakes is him, but disc golf is a different entity than most businesses. Disc golfers generally try to do things for the greater good, like Shane, Chase, lots of TDs and other vendors. A few people make a buck here and there, but invariably we are all interested in growing and promoting the game. I don't think Sleepy Hollow gives 2 shits about disc golf other than to make a buck, which is his perrogative and I think he has a couple things that could pan out to be pretty cool, but as I said earlier I flat out forgot the impact this may have had on Doanes. I think Doanes as a 9 hole course would be twice as good as his 18 holer. But it shouldn't even be an either/or situation. They actually should enhance each other. They could actually help each other draw crowds. Doanes is a sweet piece of land and I hope it's not a dead issue, but when we first discussed it we were supposed to break ground on not just a 9 hole course, but an 18 hole course last Aug.